


the truest heart's desire

by nickofhearts



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: GOODBYE AND GOOD DAY, HAPPY FUCKING ENDING, M/M, Oracle!Noct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 22:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9627689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickofhearts/pseuds/nickofhearts
Summary: Luna dies during the raid on Tenebrae. Noct ends up with her powers, but doesn't quite put them to the same use.





	

Noct dreams of a daemon, big and towering and made of so much darkness that he can't see anything else for it, swirling black that takes up all the space in his dreams. It roars and bares its jagged teeth at him, huge yellow eyes gleaming as it puts its head down close to peer with mocking disinterest at the small speck that Noct must seem.

"You think you can help _me_ , little King?"

Noct doesn't know, but he wants to try. 

The daemon howls, lashing out with its tail, and Noct wakes up, his hands black and burning where he'd met the daemon's blow.

-

He's not sure what power lets him heal the wounds from the daemon, glowing golden light that coalesces bright over his palms, but it melts away the searing pain in his hands, leaving behind only two thin white scars. 

Noct thinks of the daemon by itself in the awful darkness, how lonely it must be, and he _vows_ to do better.

-

"Back again, little King?" it asks him again that night, and Noct stares up at it with utmost determination.

"My _name_ is Noctis," he tells it. "And this is _my_ dream. I'm not leaving."

It laughs, the sound loud and horrible, echoing through an expanse of empty darkness. "I am called the Accursed, and I have existed for _eons_ before your birth." It curls up on what passes for a floor in this in-between place, watching Noct with a sense of lazy amusement. "After your passing," it says to Noct. "I will _exist_ for eons more."

There's something odd in the way its booming voice trails off at the end, sad almost, and Noct reaches out a hand to try to touch it. 

The daemon growls, snapping its teeth at him, and Noct wakes.

-

His hand doesn't just burn this time, an ugly wound through the center of his palm where the daemon had bit him, spreading putrid black lines, but the golden light heals it just the same.

This scar is more pronounced than the last ones were, the skin of Noct's palm puckered around a white center, and Noct slips on a glove before he heads down to breakfast. He doesn't want anyone to worry or ask him where he got the injury—he's not sure how to explain it. 

His dream that isn't a dream, the daemon that doesn't want his help, but Noct hears it calling out to him all the same.

-

Noct searches through the royal libraries for any books there are on daemons, where they come from or how they're made, but there isn't much to be found. No book mention a daemon that can _talk_ , prowling through dreams instead of the wilds outside the city.

He asks Ignis about it during their next lesson, but Ignis doesn't seem to know much either.

"Why the sudden interest?" Ignis questions him.

Noct digs a thumb into his palm where the skin under his glove is tougher than it had been before, the feeling where the daemon's sharp tooth had pierced him oddly numbed. "Just curious," he says with a shrug.

Ignis doesn't seem to believe him, but accepts the answer as it lies. "I'll do some research," he tells Noct, then continues their lecture on proper dinner time etiquette.

-

Noct dreams of the daemon every night for years, waking up with new wounds that the golden light heals. Sometimes the scars it leaves are only barely visible, a pattern of faded white lines crisscrossing over his arms, but sometimes the wounds are so grave that Noct's surprised the golden light can heal them at all.

One night, Noct had asked the daemon how it had been made, and it had _screamed_ at him, slashing a claw forward as if it _really_ wanted to kill Noct this time.

He'd woken up with his whole chest on fire, pain in every gasping breath.

His shirt was soaked through with blood, getting all over his bedsheets, and the skin around the four long gashes had barely pulled itself together after the golden light was gone. His chest had ached all day, and Noct was so dizzy that he'd stumbled and almost fallen on his face when he'd tried to raise his sword when training with Gladio in the afternoon.

" _Who did this to you?_ " Gladio almost roared himself, looking at the blood that was soaking through Noct's shirt again, and Noct smiled as everything went black, thinking of the daemon.

-

He didn't dream, but he could feel the daemon hovering, just at the edge of his consciousness. He reached out for it blindly, feeling it shy from the presumed touch, the low growl that Noct had come to recognize as its expression of irritated annoyance. It didn't come any closer, but it didn't leave either, keeping vigil as Noct faded in and out of awareness.

-

"Tell me about the dreams," his father said when Noct had woken up. He was sitting by Noct's bedside, holding Noct's ungloved hand in his, and he looked so _tired_.

Noct opened his mouth to do so, but then realized he couldn't. The daemon was _his_ responsibility, his father had so many burdens already, Noct couldn't give him this one to weather too.

"I'll take care of it," Noct had told him, more determined than ever.

-

Noct wakes up one morning with a strange feeling. The daemon had been more agitated than usual the night before, pacing back and forth instead of just sneering at Noct the way it usually did. He can't quite tell what it is until he gets out of bed and realizes that he can still feel the daemon's prescence like he does in his dreams, as if it's still close. 

No, that isn't right, Noct realizes suddenly. His daemon _is_ still close, somewhere in the palace. 

Noct races to get dressed, and then towards where he can feel the daemon like a cold shadow in his thoughts, but that's not right either.

Ignis' research had never yielded anything more on daemons, but they'd yielded something on the _Accursed_ , the name the daemon had given Noct so long ago. There was a prophecy that the Accursed would bring darkness to the whole world, covering it until there was naught but endless night, and only the Chosen King would be able to push it back, rising strong against it with all the powers of light at his side.

Noct doesn't know what he can do, the only ever-present darkness in his dreams and himself just a prince of the Lucian line, but he knows that his daemon is here, and he _has_ to try.

He runs to the Crystal, hoping and praying that it will give him the power for what he needs to do.

-

 _What you ask is no simple thing,_ Bahamut's voice echoes when Noct places his hands against the smooth surface of the Crystal's outermost shell. _What would you_ sacrifice _to save one cursed soul?_

There's something strange about what Bahamut says, some underlying question that Noct doesn't have the time to parse when his daemon is so close and Noct needs the power _now_.

"I will pay what is _required_ ," Noct answers him, determined beyond all reason. 

_So be it,_ Bahamut declares, and then there is nothing but light.

So much light that Noct can feel it all through his fingers, too much for him to hold, but he only needs to for long enough to get to his daemon. It's as if he's somewhere outside of his body, watching the Wall melt away, his father's ring disappearing to encircle Noct's finger instead, the metal burning hot against his skin. So much power that Noct is breathless with it, but there is no other purpose in him now than to save his daemon.

He's standing suddenly at the entrance to the audience chamber, the doors slamming open for him on a thought, and his daemon stands before him in the shape of man, but Noct knows him as true as if he's in the dream now.

He steps forward and he grasps his daemon's face in his hands, and he _pours_ the light into him. 

-

He can feel the darkness straining back, trying to push against the light with a howling cry that's made up of thousands of screaming voices, but Noct won't let it. He holds on even though it hurts, even though his hands _burn_ where they're gripping his daemon's face—pain is nothing new when Noct has scars littering the breadth of his body from his daemon, when his daemon has been hurting for so much longer, and Noct sends the light forth until there's no more left, the ring on his hand shattered to dust.

 _What would_ you _sacrifice?_ Bahamut had asked him, and Noct understands the question now.

The light of the Crystal isn't enough for his daemon, vile shadows still roiling under his hands, and Noct stands strong against the darkness, burning with the light of his _own_ life. 

Yet something else answers him then, a shining brightness that had been stifled by the multitude of shadows, almost lost until Noct had called it back, the light of his daemon's _true_ soul. Though the darkness shrieks against them still, twisting and pulling as in an attempt to ensnare them both this time, a prize unmatched, it soon burns away to nothingness, cinders drifting weightless on the wind.

Noct comes back to himself to the sensation of being kissed, a hand on the small of his back pulling him snug against the body of the man that had housed his daemon.

It's a different victory than the one before, the soft press of the man's mouth on Noct's lips and the heat of his body all against him like the realization of the promise of _so_ many years when his daemon had never let Noct touch it, snarling and biting and tearing at him when Noct had reached out with only yearning in his heart. 

And when Noct opens his eyes, there is only the man left, no darkness or shadow in him.

-

"But what happened to my daemon?" Noct asks the man, confused.

The man smirks at him with an expression that is _exactly_ like his daemon, and he says, trailing a finger over the long scar down one side of Noct's face—"Oh _Noct_. Would you not rather dream of _me_ every night?"


End file.
